Every college student knows that having your classes start later in the day is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because you don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to graph supply and demand curves. It’s a curse because by the time you finally roll out of bed for your 1:00 p.m. lecture, half the day is gone.
One would think that a nice, balanced breakfast would cure these mid-afternoon blues, but they’d be incorrect. Unless you’re ok with meatloaf and green beans to start your (late) day, or a sad bowl of cereal, you have to get to the dining halls before 10 in the morning to get your fix of eggs and bacon. If you try to go to the Caf, they even take the waffle machine away after a certain point. If you listen, you can hear Leslie Knope crying over a can of whipped cream.
It’s already a crime that Sadler doesn’t serve breakfast past noon. But the real question is, why doesn’t it serve it all day? In fact, why doesn’t EVERYBODY eat breakfast food for every meal?
Why should it not be socially acceptable to have pancakes at 6:00 p.m. on a Wednesday…
Not to exhaust all of my Parks and Rec references on this article, but according to Ron Swanson, it’s because “people are idiots.” Assigning different types of meals to different times of day — muffins for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and steak for dinner, for example — is a social construct that has been worked into us since we were old enough to eat our first Eggo waffle (which was probably fed to us at an early hour). But you can easily get all of your essential vitamins and food groups through breakfast food! Eggs can provide enough protein to be the staple of your dinner plate (and if you get an omelet, you can even fit in some veggies), and you can easily carb up for a post-class workout with pancakes and hash browns on the side. You can even get a serving of fruit with the ketchup you pour on your hash browns! And syrup has vitamins in it, right?
See? For whatever reason, Dining Services finds it socially acceptable to have a salad for breakfast when you get to the dining hall too late. Why should it not be socially acceptable to have pancakes at 6:00 p.m. on a Wednesday, a clearly better alternative?
Most importantly, breakfast food has healing properties. I don’t know what it is that gives me a long-lasting sense of comfort when I set my eyes on a breakfast buffet, but I’m not going to question it. The main reason we have these foods at the beginning of the day is to get our days off on the right foot. Something about their chemical composition and texture gives us a sense of hope that one day, we will conquer the world. Yes, that could be because they’re so delicious, and yes, that confidence could just be a sugar rush, but you have to postpone the crash that is to come somehow, and that’s by indulging in more breakfast food throughout the day!
Don’t tell me you’ve ever gotten the same rush of adrenaline by eating sweet potatoes at 11 in the morning (or at any time of day, because sweet potatoes are not nearly as exciting). They say to take the day one step at a time, so why can’t each step include breakfast food to recharge? If you really want to be productive and take charge of your day, even during that mid-afternoon lull, make yourself some eggs sunny side up … or wait until the day the dining halls follow through and serve them to you that late — whichever comes first.
Sarah Salem is a Confusion Corner columnist who isn’t afraid to crack a couple eggs to get her evening omlette.